


New LA Needs Cats

by The_Exile



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Genre: Cats, Community: heroinebigbang, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7866271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lin, Celica and Murderess on an epic quest to acquire more cats and torment Doug.</p><p> </p><p>thank you Prettypoison27 for the artwork:  http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2v9rtaq&s=9#.V78UMSiLTcs</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Doug was just about to take the shot when Lin's shield slammed into his raygun, knocking the barrel of the miniature cannon to one side. A column of white-hot laser fire streaked through the night and scoured furrows into the Primordia valley, setting fire to the scrubland and sending Indigens bolting away in all directions. Only one Grex reacted with ferocious bloodlust, not panic. Much larger than its pack-mates, the lattice of scars down its silver-tinged black pelt a testimony to the many fierce battles of domination it had won. It took one look towards the source of the gunfire, fixing the tall Harrier a baleful red-eyed glare. Doug drew his photon saber and returned its gaze, snarling a challenge of his own. He heard the high-pitched whine of a pair of Psycho Launchers, saw his visor's damage reports for his rear armour plating, the warnings of friendly fire, heck, he was half expecting it to happen in the first place, but he narrowly avoided falling face-first down the valley. He planted his legs in a slide, still firing at the Tyrant and screaming as he tried to ignore Murderess' shots raining down on him from above. His furious assault forced the gigantic Grex into a retreat, so he tore along the canyon after it, ignoring his aching calf muscles and dreaming of the magical day when he had enough money to pay for his Skell repair bills. 

He was shaken out of his fantasy when he realised that the Grex wasn't retreating after all. That was an enraged Grex noise, not a cry of panic, and anyway, since when did Tyrants retreat? It had found a new target. And judging by the high-pitched voice yelling something about 'not letting it get away', coupled with the rapid barking of dual guns, Doug knew who it had decided it had a better chance of eating than himself.

"Celica! Watch out!" he yelled, leaping in front of the beast and wildly firing his raygun. As he floated amidst a shower of laser bolts, feeling like some cliched slow motion sequence from a movie, he was glad that the gravity was so low on Mira. 

The tufty-eared Xenomorph woman turned and fired a warning shot at him, "Go away! You'll hit it, and you're breaking my concentration!"

"Murderess, I thought you had the situation under control!" Lin panted as she chased after them both. 

"What the hell is going on?" Doug roared. Through a rolling cloud of dust, he could just make out Murderess running towards him too, daggers drawn. 

"I'll lure it this way!" said Lin, cranking up her Gatling gun. The weapon whirled into life, spraying the Grex with bullets, and the beast slowly turned its head towards the heavily armed tiny girl. Activating her force shields and the sub-sonic frequency emitters that the Shield Troopers used to attract Indigens' attention, she turned the Grex around so that it followed her in an arc away from both of them. Doug suddenly remembered that the path branched off a few metres ahead, so he assumed the plan was to distract it from whatever Celica was up to. 

"If you'd just let me bag the damn thing..." he muttered under his breath, aware that complaints would only result in more punishment. The girls had been like this all week and they wouldn't leave him alone, volunteering to accompany him on missions so close to the time he discovered he was assigned to them that he suspected they were somehow fixing things with Headquarters. 

All he had done was kill one Terebra. Or, as the girls insisted on calling the vicious beasts, 'puppies'. Okay, so they looked a little like some sort of small dog, if small dogs had lizard tails and frilled, rigid ears the size of their entire body, and were also ten thousand times more likely to kill you in your sleep. It had been a Tyrant Terebra, the size of a horse, with poisonous spittle, that had been devouring entire Nopon caravans, but this didn't stop the girls putting him on some kind of unofficial probation for the crime of slaughtering animals they thought were cute. Actually, he wasn't sure if Murderess cared or had been paid to go along with their plan. He was also watched to make sure he didn't kill the young of any Indigens he hunted, despite the fact that Tyrantism was almost certainly genetic. He wasn't sure what he had done wrong this time - surely he was allowed to do his actual job and pacify an unusually strong Grex, an animal that could not be called cute by any stretch of the imagination - but he knew he had offended the girls in some way. Maybe they just didn't trust him at all any more, and were pre-emptively stopping him from doing anything wrong. Maybe they really were going to murder him, out here where nobody would find any trace of the body. The Tyrant would probably eat him, so at least it was a fitting end for a Harrier.

As he was trying to map out possible escape routes, something occurred to him, something very urgent.

"We're heading off the cliff!" he yelled to Lin.

He sprang forward again, diving under the Grex and shoving Lin away from the cliff edge. She was about to protest, then the Tyrant chose this moment to lunge at them.

When he regained consciousness, he saw three things: Lin cleaning Grex blood off her shield and looking decidedly irritated, Murderess sitting on a rock and looking at something on her wrist terminal, probably her bank balance, and Celica staring down at him with a look of concern on her delicate-boned face.

"... Think he's going to live after all," she reported.

"Sorry to disappoint," he muttered. Every muscle in his body ached.

"Oh, no, we were all worried about you, honest!" she said, glaring at Murderess as she snorted back a laugh, "In fact, we believe we owe you a reward for helping us out."

"Huh? Helping you with what?"

Celica smiled and held up something small, furry and, according to his visor, not a known Tyrant. It purred and nuzzled his face.

"We've decided to award you the honour of naming her!"

* * *

"Here, Cally! Stop playing with your food!" 

"Tatsu not cat food!" the Nopon merchant piped up indignantly. He returned the little Calico cat's baleful glare, then hopped to the other side of the table.

"Now, now, don't sulk just because you have competition for the title of cutest pet in the Barracks!"

"Tatsu IS TOO the cutest! Um, Tatsu mean, Tatsu NOT pet! Tatsu important dignitary!"

"Okay, I agree you would be an important part of any diplomatic meeting."

"Tatsu glad you see reason!"

"... Because everyone knows the meal is the part where the real diplomacy happens."

"Exactl... wait, what?"

The cat yawned and curled up into a near-perfect circle of fur. Her name 'Cally' was short for 'Caladar', after the Wrothian Skells. It was a pun on 'Calico' and also a reference to the feline appearance of Wrothians and also Doug's aptitude as a Skell pilot. Lin had to admit it was quite a clever name. She was half expecting him to use the Tyrant naming convention, and for Lin to have to punish him for it. She made a mental note to stop by the Mimeosome Maintenance Centre and check up on him again today, maybe even apologise if he didn't do anything to raise her hackles again.

"Tatsu, I'm just popping out for a while, okay? You look after Cally for me!"

"Linly buy food?" asked the Nopon, crossing his head-wings in front of him and blinking at her with big round eyes. The cat's ears pricked up as well. Lin was just about to think of a clever retort when there was a polite knock on the door.

"Come in!" chimed Tatsu, jumping off the table so he could scamper to the door. Seconds later, he called across the room, "It nice pointy-eared lady!"

"Hi there, Celica," called Lin.

"Linly was just going out to buy food, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind making snacks for guests!" piped up Tatsu, bouncing excitedly behind Celica as she walked in and sat herself down at the kitchen table. She smiled when she saw the cat and reached over to stroke her behind the ears. Cally chirruped her annoyance at being interrupted, then rolled over, but allowed herself to be petted.

"Actually, I was just going to check the mission board and maybe visit Doug. It can wait, though," Lin assured her.

"That's great! I have a project I urgently need your help on," said Celica, rifling around in her backpack, "I bought you some cat food as a reward."

"Um... thank you?" Lin took one of the cans and inspected it, wondering if it would be impolite to ask for a real mission reward. She hoped it just meant that it wasn't a real mission either.

"I was worried your supplies were getting low," continued the Xenomorph, "How many cats have you rescued on missions now? Three?"

"It's nice to have some company in here," said Lin, "Although I'm worried one of them is learning how to use the control panel. Either that, or we have ghosts. Sometimes the floors are bright pink and all the holograms have been changed to Saltats when we get in at night."

"The silver tabby keeps wandering onto the construction site, you know," she continued, "Rock has been making friends with her. Don't worry, I've been keeping an eye on them and anyway, he's really gentle. He lets her ride around on his head!"

"Tatsu allowed to play with Rock too?" asked the Nopon. Lin stifled a giggle at both the mental images.

"So, it got me thinking," continued Celica, "There are lots more pet cats in Mira these days. Dogs too. I think they must have found the part of the Lifehold with them all in, or something. But there still aren't all *that* many."

"You think there's something to the rumours that Director Nagi is exaggerating the number of survivors in the Lifehold?" asked Lin.

"No, I think there must be more cats running around Mira someplace," said Celica, "They probably escaped the Lifehold storage because, you know, they're cats."

"A lot of the cats are Mimeosomes," said Lin.

"Exactly!" said Celica, as though this explained everything, "So we could have a sideline involving the Outfitters and the Prospectors. They could provide the materials for cat mimeosome repairs. The Reclaimers would be the ones looking for cat data from the Lifehold, of course, while the Mediators could find people's missing cats and the Interceptors could protect the..."

"Wait, did you come here to ask me to help you find cats?" 

Celica nodded, "I've got the whole thing worked out. The Murderess even said she'd help us. Did you know she really likes cats?"

"She does? She actually likes something?" Lin scratched her head.

"Ladies want to find kitties?" Tatsu suddenly exclaimed. He had been quiet for so long, or at least busy on the other side of the room, dancing from side to side and pulling funny faces at his reflection in the terminal, that Lin had quite forgotten he was there.

"Fear not! Tatsu will help you find kitties! Tatsu know exactly where good supply!" he declared, taking his biter out of his backpack and thrusting it into the air while hopping from one foot to the other, in imitation of some legendary Heropon of yore.

"You do, huh?" Lin folded her arms and gave him a sceptical look. 

"You no believe? Then Tatsu will have to prove," he said firmly, "Tatsu so generous, he not even charge for first kitty-cat!"

"You go ahead and do that," said Lin, yawning. The two young women watched as the Nopon bounced out of the door, humming a tune to himself. 

"So, shall I make the tea while you tell me the details of your master plan to fill New Los Angeles with cats?"

"Is it okay if I use the big board?" 

"Sure. It gets sat on by cats a lot, though, so you may have to change some of the settings back."

* * *

As predicted, the speaker volume had been turned up to maximum when Celica turned on the main mission terminal. The noise woke up the cat and sent her scuttling underneath one of the holo-booths, glaring at Lin as though it was somehow all her fault. After the changes had been undone, or at least the ones that had been discovered, Celica brought up a map of Mira, on which she'd positioned some markers.

“The green ones are sites of completed cat rescue missions,” she explained, “Blue ones are random cat sightings, solid where they've been retrieved, fuzzy where they haven't. Those dotted lines around them are where we think their territories extend. As you see, they mostly triangulate around the animal DNA capsule that Yelv found, but they extend quite far. These cats adapt to Mira fast!” 

“They're pretty good survivors,” said Lin, “But I'm worried even they won't be able to deal with a planet as hostile as Mira. What if the Prone decide they're food?”

“Or, worse, they may eventually spread all over Mira, disrupting the delicate balance of the ecosystem and rendering the Pathfinders obsolete,” said Celica, “So, we have to recover them all, whatever L says!”

“You shouldn't pay too much attention to what L says. He's probably overheard an expression involving cats and keeps getting it wrong,” said Lin, “So, Project New LA Needs Cats… where shall we start?”

“Oh, I think we should give our project a better name than that...” said Celica. Then her communicator started beeping. She took it out and peered at the message, “Never mind, we don't have time for that now. Someone's posted a cat retrieval mission on the main notice board!”

“You grab it, I'll start up our Skells!” said Lin.

* * *

Several minutes later, the garage door opened and three large, heavily armed and armoured giant robots rumbled out (Lin had radioed Murderess and she was on her way). The first thing that the thirteen-year-old mechanic saw when she poked her head outside was a massive ruckus with Celica in the centre. They had accidentally hit rush hour for missions and everyone was crowded around, trying to barge each other out of the way, in order to grab the most lucrative missions for themselves. The net result looked like Black Friday but with more giant robots. Lin jumped in the cockpit of her own Skell and stomped into the melee to help her comrade. Admittedly, Celica was holding her own with impressive resolve. Lin had always thought of her as quiet, kind and a little reserved. Then she remembered how much she had fought to keep Rock out of trouble, and that her new obsession was probably almost as important to her as her enormous but child-like partner.

Suddenly, people began to scream and back away from the console. Someone was cackling manically and firing into the crowd. Lin waved at Murderess and the three of them met up at the front of the queue. The mission hadn't been taken yet. Celica accepted the mission while Lin and Murderess kept the rest of the crowd pacified until they had finished and left. The crowd quickly filled in behind them and, seeing that the three women hadn't taken all the best missions after all, they soon resumed their attempts to trample each other to death. Once they were well away from the chaos, Lin jumped back out of her Skell so she could peer over Celica's shoulder at the holo-window with the mission details.

“Sometimes I worry that I'm not needed when they behave like that all on their own,” Murderess commented, yawning and stretching her arms above her head. 

“With moves like that, I don't understand why you're not an Interceptor,” said Lin.

“Because the pay sucks and I'd have to listen to Irina whine all day,” she retorted, “By the way, that huge mission reward you told me about… mind showing me the part in the details where it says that?”

“Um… oh, yeah, that… well, Celica's kind of in charge of the operation and she needs to look up the mission specifics right now, so… hey, what the heck does Tatsu think he's doing?”

“Pull the other one, lady, if you think such a dumb trick will work on me...”

Then Celica shrieked and hid behind a crate. Murderess' head whipped around and she pointed her guns at the rapidly approaching stampede. A large, angry mob was chasing Tatsu down Armory Alley, and every member of the gang was a spitting, hissing, sword-wielding Wrothian. His legs pinwheeled across the floor in a kind of bouncing half-hover, bouncing between the stalls and upsetting their contents, while the Wrothians tore straight through everything in their path, yowling bloody murder.

“Linly! I found Kitty-Cats!” he reported, then, as an afterthought, he added, “Help!”

Lin grabbed the Nopon by the head-wings and pulled him to one side before shoving him onto the counter of a small market stall sandwiched in-between the Outfitters' terminal and the equipment shop terminal, “Quick, lie still and I'll pretend to be the onion seller!” 

“It's not going to work,” Murderess sighed, “He stinks of the stuff. They'll eat him anyway.”

“What stuff?”

“Tatsu catch kitty-cats with catnip,” the Nopon explained in a forlorn voice, his well-styled tuft of hair wilting, “Try and get biggest, prettiest, shiniest kitty-cats. Tatsu no understand where genius plan go wrong.”

“In other words, he ran into the Wrothian district covered in Kiran catnip,” Murderess said, “Because the little pest still can't tell the difference between a Wrothian and a cat, and he presumably doesn't know that Wrothians become violent when they're on a catnip high.”

“But Tatsu still did job, right? Kitties all brought to Linly!” he said, “Now can Tatsu try cat food as well?”

“What's this about the mission reward being cat food?” asked Murderess, her tone suddenly dangerously flat. Fortunately, her train of thought was interrupted by a berserk Wrothian picking up the table, throwing it out of the way and roaring at the hated onion.


	2. Chapter 2

Just in time, the table was caught and placed back on the floor by the giant mechanical claw of Lin's Skell. A missile launcher was mounted on the shoulder and the other hand carried a huge sword. Lin jumped onto the claw hand and ordered the Skell to lift her into the cockpit using the controls on her wrist. The other two Skells came roaring around the corner as well, then the three of them formed a defensive wall that blocked off Armoury Alley so that Tatsu could scuttle safely down the main road to the Barracks. Far from being intimidated by the war machines, several of the Wrothians managed to clamber straight up the legs of Lin's Skell like cheetahs climbing trees, before trying to pry the visor from the helmet with an assortment of bladed weapons or even their bare hands if they couldn't find anything else. The pungent stench of concentrated catnip had gotten onto Lin and even been transferred to her Skell. She grabbed a handful of the frenzied cat-people, depositing them back on the floor, while raining missiles in front of her in a vague hope of deterring the rest from approaching. The people who had been busy fighting over missions were now beginning to settle for what they had and wander down to the Alley for some last-minute resupplying. The obstruction on the roads, together with the mess they were making, was causing several tempers to flare up. The fights were starting up again, this time over alleged queue-jumping. It wasn't helping that L had chosen that precise moment to have a stock clearance sale. He couldn't think what else to do, as his stall had burst into flames after being hit by missiles and he didn't have anywhere else to store the goods.

* * *

Chased by angry BLADEs as well as Wrothians now, the three Skells entered their vehicle modes and sped through the streets towards the front gate, into the Primordian wilderness. Several of Lin's assailants had fallen off when the arms and head of her Skell turned into the front bumper and hood ornament of what would look like an all-terrain vehicle of some kind if it wasn't top-heavy with weapons and made of totally mismatched parts she had lifted off her enemies. She hit the accelerator and careened down a valley, hoping to shake the remaining Wrothians off her trail by going in a complicated route to the mission marker on her map, somewhere on the other side of Sylvalum (She wondered, How did these cats get out there, anyway?). It wasn't really working as the skilled hunters kept jumping out from behind rocks or on top of her from the branches of overhanging trees, becoming even more of a menace, but at least the shoppers had given up chasing her and when she accidentally fell in a lake, the scent washed off, leaving a small gang of embarrassed Wrothians to cough and pretend to be secretly noble and dignified really.

Looking again at her map, she saw that she was somewhere in Lake Biahno, going in completely the wrong direction. Her companions weren't too far away, Murderess having wandered off to a nearby cave to collect samples and Celica running L's newly patented Feline Detection Device (Lin had only barely talked him out of calling it a Cat Scanner) over everything.

“We should get moving,” said Lin, “We've got a long way to go and the weather's not looking so good.”

“You sure you want to go right now?” asked Murderess, flashing Lin one of her crooked smiles, “Night's falling soon. All sorts of interesting things come out at night. High paying bounties, mind you...”

“Didn't you even read the mission description? There's a lost cat somewhere, waiting to be rescued. It might be cold or frightened or lonely, or…”

“Or stealing Doug's kills,” Lin finished Celica's sentence for her, “And I'm in enough trouble with him already.” 

“Well, if it gets this mission over and done with faster,” Murderess yawned, “Hey, I know an interesting short cut where we could make some good money along the way!”

“Remember that all of us dying horribly will delay the mission,” warned Celica.

“We could spend the money on making L build a cat pagoda for Rock,” said Murderess, “And I bet you five hundred bucks I can talk Rock into wearing it!”

“You're on!” said Celica. The two of them ran into the cave.

“Hey, how is that a short cut? I thought this was too urgent for distractions!” yelled Lin, chasing after them. Just too late, she remembered that her Skell was a larger, heavier model than theirs and didn't fit through the cave entrance without ducking. Then she remembered that heavier Skells sometimes sank in mud. She sighed. It was just going to be one of those jobs, she thought, and the screech of an unusually large Mortifole confirmed her suspicions.

* * *

By the time they reached Sylvalum, the sun was rising again. A heavy spore storm had also broken out, completely obscuring their view of the white plain's weird beauty. The seeds of the enormous glowing pods, some of them big enough to fit a house in, got into the vents in the helmets and played havoc with the sensors. By the time they reached the alleged site of the mission, they had fallen off cliffs three times, been ambushed ten times by something they couldn't even see, never mind aim at properly, and almost accidentally ran over a Nopon, for which they were sued. 

“Please tell me this isn't a fluffy white cat we're looking for,” Murderess growled.

“Pardon?” Celica yelled at the top of her voice. Over the howling winds and the static caused by the spores clogging up their communicators, the three BLADEs could hear each other only marginally better than they could see each other. 

“Never mind,” the Curator rolled her eyes and sighed, “It's not like we could see a black cat anyway.”

“Will you two be quiet? We don't know what's out there hunting us!” Lin called out.

“How are we going to find the cat, then? We can't see it, the radar's busted, we can't call out to it, catnip would get blown away in the wind...”

“There's supposed to be an outpost around somewhere. Maybe we should just stop and wait for it to clear up,” suggested Lin.

None of them really wanted to delay the mission for too long but Lin had to admit the short cut had already saved them a lot of time. True, it had almost gotten them killed five times, but she was impressed at them for limiting it to only five and anyway, they had in fact survived. The nearest BLADE outpost was easier to find on the radar than a cat, so it didn't take them too long to reach safety. They left their Skells in the refuelling station and secured themselves in the bunker. It hadn't been long since the outpost was last resupplied, so they were even allowed to help themselves to the food. A couple of bored-looking Interceptors were on guard and a Pathfinder was stuck there too, after being caught in the storm when he was out surveying the area. 

“I don't suppose you saw any cats?” Celica asked him as Lin did her best to turn the trail rations into something resembling a proper meal. Murderess lay on the sofa, logging all the samples she had found today and checking how much money she was making.

The Pathfinder shook his head, “The times when I could actually see anything, I was looking for faulty data probes. I saw a Curator pick up a small animal last week, though.”

“Damn competition never learns,” muttered Murderess, reflexively reaching for her knives.

“Saw a Tyrant, mind you. Big bastard, up in the sky,” noted the Pathfinder, “It shouldn't bother you on the ground but I'd watch out if you see its shadow, and don't go near it. Thing took down a Skell with one hit the other day.”

“I'll tell Doug when I get back,” promised Lin.

As night fell again, the spores finally cleared except for a few motes that glowed faintly in the moonlight, hovering like will-o-wisps across the vast, strange meadows of Sylvalum. Everything was still and quiet once more, only a slight chill breeze in the air, and if it wasn't for the Interceptors helpfully pointing out everything that looked like a funny-shaped rock but actually jumped out and ate people who came too close, it would almost feel serene. The three of them trekked out again, heading towards the giant plant that dominated the skyline, a river of sap flowing down like a waterfall from a hole you could fit a Skell inside.   
“I'm getting a reading,” whispered Celica as they crept past a circle of Liceors who were dancing around a half-buried Aeviter, honking in unison through their trumpet-like beaks. The device mounted on her wrist was beeping rapidly now, making it difficult to attempt any kind of stealth, but the birds were far more interested in their ritual than three young women trying to find a cat in the middle of an alien field.

Something small and fast darted through the undergrowth. Murderess reacted first, springing into action and following it silently across a field of spore-plants, knives unsheathed just in case it wasn't a cat. Seconds later, she put her fingers to her lips, made the symbol for 'cat' and gestured to follow. 

Lin reacted the slowest, reluctant to stray too far from her Skell. She wasn't even at the field by the time she heard a yowling, then saw the hissing, spitting ball of white fluff launch itself from a billowing cloud of spores and try to latch itself to Murderess' face.

“You scared it!” Celica accused, already running after the cat who shot off after being dropped by a vehemently swearing Murderess. Blood ran down her arms and chest from several claw marks. 

“Never mind that! Move in and surround it!” said Lin. 

“Oh, screw this,” Murderess spat. At her command, her Skell rolled towards her and she jumped inside. Over the microphone, her voice boomed, “Here kitty kitty!”

“How do you expect to catch it in that?” asked Lin.

“Holding fields work on small Indigens, right?” she was already skimming past Celica to waylay the cat from the other side. 

Lin shrugged and boarded her own Skell.

“Be careful!” said Celica.

“Yeah, I know, cats are fragile, I'll put the thing on minimum strength!”

“No, I mean, the readings are going crazy!” yelled the Xenomorph. Before Murderess could answer, the entire field exploded into spores. Out of the flowerbeds sprang several more assorted balls of fluff, all of them angry. 

One of them, small and black with blue eyes, had a purple outlined fancy-looking box on the scanners and a name tag popped up that said 'Mittens, Harbinger of Doom'. 

“Of all the… I was JOKING earlier!” Lin shrieked and barely ducked in time as Murderess' energy scythe swing went wild, almost lopping the arms off her companion's Skell in an attempt not to hit the cats with the hasty counter-attack she had begun when she was ambushed.

The cats surrounded the slightly larger cat and hissed at the two Skells, their backs arched and their fur on end. Celica shooed the other two back and walked slowly towards the terrified felines, crouched to make herself seem smaller and less threatening, her arms wide and hands beckoning. She had taken out a bag of catnip and a fish she had caught.

“Here, Mittens!” she whispered in a pleasant voice, narrowing her eyes. The closest guard cat approached her slowly, ears still pricked up and nose twitching. They sniffed her hand and gave the fish an experimental lick. Celica gently touched the cat's fur. Lin was surprised at how soon the clearly angry and feral cats seemed to warm to the Xenomorph woman. Either her species were trusted more by cats or she had a real gift for soothing animals. Surely she would have made a better Mediator… then again, Lin hadn't imagined Murderess made the ideal Curator but she sort of understood the decision now. What drew people to certain divisions wasn't always as straightforward as Lin's immediate love of the Outfitter lifestyle.

Suddenly, her pondering was interrupted when Mittens the Alleged Tyrant hissed, immediately drawing the attention of all the other cats. The entire colony looked at the sky, their eyes glowing in the sudden pitch-darkness as the shadow descended upon them.

It was a Xern. A big one. Well, actually, Lin didn't think you got small Xerns, but this was apparently an especially big one. 

“Run!” Lin screamed, “Grab the cats and RUN!”

“We're already too late,” whispered Murderess. Lin had never before heard the hard-edged woman's voice fill with such absolute terror. It was beyond panic, something that threatened to come out the other side into serene resignation to death.

Mittens bared her teeth and hissed.

Everything seemed to happen in blurry, tunnel-visioned, nightmarish slow motion. There was an unreal quality to it all, as though it were happening to someone else. Lin felt her own arms slam the controls into vehicle mode, hurl the wheel to one side in a desperate attempt to reverse the transformed Skell while pushing the accelerator down as far as it could go. Murderess turned and fired all her Skell's weapons one after the other into the air, screaming all the epithets she could think of with the speakers turned up to full. Celica flung herself forwards, trying to dive between the enemy carrier and the cats in a last ditch attempt to shield them. This was not helped by Mittens' sudden decision to jump on the Pathfinder's head and use it as a platform to vault onto Murderess' Skell. 

A hatch opened up in the bottom of the Xern. A blinding white light flashed, followed by a roar like a thunderclap that caused the very earth to rumble. A column of fire rose to the sky, tearing apart the meadow and hurling down rocks from the surrounding mountains. The sky was lit up with burning spores, a hellish parody of the wondrous glimmering scene they had witnessed earlier. Panicked Indigens stampeded in every direction, all of them, even those plant symbiote elephant things. The siren in the outpost went off, its flashing red light visible from all the way across the other side of the field. 

Lin was confused to find her Skell suddenly moving through the air, as she didn't remember hitting the jump button. The blast must have thrown her out of range. She landed with a thud, half thrown out of the transformation, her machines' legs splaying in a way that would have suggested they were broken if the Skell was a human. Desperately hitting the movement controls, she didn't receive any responses, only obnoxious alert noises and flashing emergency lights. Half the guns were working but the targeting system wasn't. She could barely see out of her display at all. Murderess' voice was still audible, although it was distorted and weirdly high-pitched. She had no idea where Celica was, though. She fired the guns anyway, grateful that the enemy was still so enormous she couldn't possibly miss it. This probably wasn't all that good a thing, come to think of it, especially as it was moving directly towards her. Could it see her, down here in the dirt, so much smaller than it, or was it just a coincidence that it decided to drift in this direction? If it was just firing at large groups of moving things, maybe it would go away now she was immobile. 

Even if that were true, it might not help her, as her Skell's ejector system wasn't working. She had no idea if anyone was coming to rescue her. All the sensors were down now. She wasn't even sure which way up she was facing. 

"Come on, work, you hunk of junk!" she yelled, thumping the controls. She wasn't sure if the soundsystem worked and didn't want to try it. She was just as likely to attract the Xern's attention as she was to alert any backup teams that might have arrived, "I don't want to lose insurance on the Skell. I don't want to fail this mission and make Celica miserable. I don't want Doug to laugh at me about it. I'd really rather not die either, so can you please..."

There was a whining, screeching sound like complaining metal, punctuated by a low hum. Then she was suddenly yanked upwards, her Skell's limbs flailing at her sides. Her instinctive scream was abruptly cut off when the lurching motion sent her head colliding hard with the control panel. Everything faded to black.


	3. Chapter 3

She was mildly surprised to wake up again. Her head was pounding, she tasted blood in her mouth, her vision was swimming and she was definitely going to throw up in the near future, but this only made it all the more painfully obvious that she was still alive. When her senses stopped reeling for long enough that she could actually see anything, she was confused by the first three things she noticed. Firstly, her feet weren't touching the ground. Secondly, everything was bathed in a glaring yellow light like the tacky strip-lighting in one of the downtown diners that she swore was kept deliberately that bad out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. However, the diner hadn't been patrolled by Prones. Well, not by heavily armed ones, and usually not more than two at once. Thirdly, she couldn't move her limbs. It took her every ounce of strength just to move her eyes. 

One of the Prone stopped to look at her, having noticed that her eyes were now open. He pointed his gun at her. Hissing a sharp command, his female colleague, probably a superior officer from her bearing, gave him a reprimanding thump to the head.

"We don't have permission to execute captives! Do you want to get us both in trouble?"

"She's moving. She's going to escape."

"Well, shoot her when she makes her attempt, then. That way we're covered."

The male guard shot Lin a look of such hatred that even someone who hadn't read up on Prone non-verbal communication understood, "We're not supposed to be taking captives. They're humans. We kill humans on sight."

"These ones can talk to the Hell Beast."

"The Qlurian can talk to the Hell Beast. We don't need the other two."

"Qlurians are very emotionally sensitive. If we torture her companions in front of her, she'll break easily," the female guard explained. She was not angry. She didn't show any emotion at all, only casual appraisal of her victim and their potential uses.

Lin tried not to show fear, a task made easier by her virtual inability to move her facial muscles but not by her lack of bowel control. She tried to concentrate on a more logical analysis of the situation. All three of them were alive, probably on board the Xern. They were needed alive for now, especially Celica. There was something called a Hell Beast, possibly.

"The more dangerous one is probably also regaining consciousness," said the female guard, turning on her heel and marching in the opposite direction. The male guard followed, still glaring at her over his shoulder occasionally. 

Lin was out of sight again, or at least not the object of attention. She concentrated on trying to move just a little more. Stasis fields were never perfect. If they held her completely still, she would be unable to breathe, and they would have to try and install life support equipment for a race they weren't sure of the exact anatomy of. She opened her eyes fully, ignoring the dull, throbbing pain that suffused everything. Once that worked, she tried to move the rest of her face, then slowly turn her head from side to side. She would never be able to regain her full range of movement in time but she might be able to get a hand free to press a button, say. While she had no weapons, not all of the little electronic devices she had on her person had been picked up by their scanners, or at least hadn't been considered weapons. Disrupting an electronic device for long enough to drop a stasis field for a split second, however, was the sort of thing her hacking tools and other gadgets could manage, if she could regain enough movement to nudge them in the right way. However, it wouldn't do her any good simply to break out of the field. Her weapons had been taken off her, she had only been given rudimentary medical treatment (again, by someone who didn't really understand how human bodies worked) and she knew she couldn't take out an armed Prone in unarmed combat. She would have to work out the guards' patterns so she could sneak out, or spot where they put their weapons away, or maybe think of a way to make a distraction, possibly by causing something electronic and vital to malfunction. 

After half an hour of plotting and trying not to think about possible painful deaths in her immediate future, her distraction happened. 

Sirens blared throughout the carrier. Warning lights flashed on and off underneath notices that Lin, because of the weird phenomena on Mira that meant everyone more or less understood everyone else's language, understood to mean 'security breach - red alert - battle stations'. The two guards ran past Lin's stasis booth, guns loaded and ready. She thought she saw panic in the male Prone's eyes.

"... Hell Beast is loose? I thought we had ten people watching it!" he complained.

"Yeah, and they're probably all dead," hissed the woman, "Idiots, I told the Captain we needed double that number!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do about it, then?"

"Stop being a coward! We were all told to go and apprehend it. All of us! Or it'll only pick us off one by one anyway."

Lin watched them leave and realised she was now alone. She was also helpless, possibly in the same room as a 'Hell Beast' that may or may not have slaughtered ten Prone soldiers. She wasn't sure if the two guards were even that much of a priority any more. Gathering all her adrenaline-fueled strength, she forced her body to react to her brain's urging, slamming arms and legs against the walls of the booth. It was her right Monado hairclip that shorted the stasis field, after she accidentally smacked herself on the side of the head. The jolt caused its central glass plates to whir to life, displaying various Japanese characters. A tiny stereo speaker played 'You Will Know Our Names' as a blue light extended from the red sword hilt, forming a miniature ether blade. It couldn't actually cut anything - it was supposed to be rave wear, not battle wear - but Prone stasis technology apparently reacted badly to sudden influxes of ether energy. The moment the field flickered, Lin hurled herself out of the booth, barely catching herself rather than face-planting into the opposite wall. After throwing up for real, she forced herself to her feet and ran down the corridor. A half-recharged weapon had been thrown on the floor, presumably in the rush to respond to the emergency. She gave it a quick burst of charge from one of the capsules she kept in a hidden trouser pocket, then fired it at the controls for the other two booths, releasing Celica and Murderess. The Qlurian profusely thanked her while struggling for breath, while Murderess threatened to tear the throat out of the nearest Prone with her bare teeth and then drink their blood.

“Personally I'd suggest we find some weapons,” said Celica, “Although I'd really rather we escaped without any violent altercations whatsoever. We'd never survive trying to fight our way past all the crew on this carrier!”

“I think someone might have done a lot of the work for us,” said Lin, shuddering.

“Oh yeah, what is a Hell Beast anyway?” demanded Murderess, “Must be nasty to rile up that many Prone.”

“Ah… I may be able to explain that...” said Celica.

“Oh yeah, you care to explain how we take it on?”

“We don't. You see, it's...”

“Mittens!” Murderess cried out, pointing over Lin's shoulder, “Right, that's it, you fleabitten moggy, you won't get away from me again!”

Lin turned around to see a familiar black cat hiss and bare her teeth at Murderess. Celica shook her head and waved her arms at the Curator, then crouched down and made soothing noises, beckoning the cat. With a rather confused meow, Mittens slunk over to Celica and sniffed her hand.

“I'm sorry, they took all my kitty treats off me, but you can have as much as you want once we get back home!”

“Hey, Lin, I'm gonna laugh my head off watching you explain this one to Doug,” said Murderess, lounging against the wall.

“You can explain to the police why nobody can find his body if he goes near Mittens,” Lin growled.

“Oh, I'm sure it's all a mistake, isn't it, Mittens?” Celica gingerly stroked the cat between her ears. Mittens seemed to accept this gesture without complaint, although she still refused to purr, “I imagine the Harriers are pulling drunken pranks on each other again. Or maybe their database isn't working!”

“I bet I can help them with that,” said Lin.

“Help or 'help'?” asked Murderess, giving the small engineer a sly wink, “Oh, c'mon, it's not -that- unethical. Just one doctored record. It's not like we'll be putting New LA in any actual danger over one cute lil kitty, and they'll be grateful that we don't have to deprive them of Doug!”

“You know, I kinda like this idea...”

“Someone's coming!” Celica hissed, putting a finger to her lips. They all crouched down, their backs against the wall. Lin handed her gun to Murderess, the more competent fighter, as she sorted through her possessions for any even remotely offensive device. She had a Skell autopilot device disguised as a small pair of earphones but this was no use without a functioning Skell.

“… Saw it go this way!” growled a low-pitched Prone voice. Lin heard clanking armoured footfalls and the whine of charging laser pistols.

“The prisoners got out,” replied another female voice, “I expect the Qlurian has regained control of the Beast. Be very cautious!”

“I am not afraid of a small, primitive...”

The large Prone soldier's words were silenced by a feline yowl, then the gurgling sound of a slit throat. The lifeless body collapsed to the floor with a solid thud. Pandemonium erupted among the Prone ranks, with the staccato whine of laser fire on full auto, frenzied battle cries and agonised death shrieks, people trying to run, objects being pushed over or catching fire when they were hit by stray bullets. Lin's radar almost blinded her with warnings about the energy levels building up in the room. Ether, thermic, gravity, sheer life energy, strength and speed, they were all so far off the charts that the machine was almost shorted out trying to calculate them, and they were all coming from a single, tiny, concentrated point that flitted around the battlefield like a spirit of wrath.

“The Harbinger of Doom…” whispered Lin, her voice shaking. She was frozen to the spot. She hadn't even registered it when Murderess ran into the fray, or when Celica followed her, calling out to the cat. Lin needed to warn them. She didn't know if they still had radars – she had hidden hers. The raw energy radiating from the futile battle was pushing her back, heavier and more oppressive than the stasis field, nothing that technology could solve. She tried to move her lips again but, as if in a dream, no sound came out.

Then, as quickly as it had started, the battle ended. The screams died down. There was nobody left, Lin realised. Only still, silent Prone bodies, Murderess already rifling through the pockets of the nearest one, and a black cat sitting in Celica's arms, head rested on her shoulder, giving Lin a dirty look as if to say 'what slanderous lies have you come up with this time? I'm just a cute cat, see?'.

The sirens were still going on but there was nobody to answer them. They were alone on a Ganglion carrier that could be anywhere in Mira, and that they hadn't the first clue how to fly. 

“Have you still got the Skell thing?” asked Celica.

“Yeah, but it's no use, I'm afraid. My Skell's had it.”

“They got mine too,” Murderess sighed, “Just after I had the colour scheme exactly how I wanted it.”

“I think I still have mine,” said Celica, “I got out of it, remember? They just grabbed me without even caring about my Skell.”

“Can you still track its signal?” asked Lin. Celica nodded, “That's great! If you give me its co-ordinates, I might be able to get this thing to follow yours instead of complaining it can't find mine. I might need the registration details to get the Skell to accept the device as an owner.”

“I wonder if I can con Irina into buying me a new one...” continued Murderess. Her face brightened when she found an intact pair of dual blades. Wiping the blood off them, she stashed them in her belt. Then she continued her morbid but profitable task while Celica helped Lin to input new data into her autopilot device. The two girls peered at the device with baited breath, not daring to speak in case they jinxed their luck. After five minutes of relative silence, the device began beeping and a new blip showed up on Celica's radar, flashing and moving straight towards them at a rapid pace. The Qlurian's face brightened but the engineer still looked worried.

“It's going to go in a straight line without stopping, so we still need to pray that it'll manage to flatten anything in its path,” said Lin, “It has some ability to defend itself but the AI isn't that intelligent, so I'm worried about it getting into a fight.”

“If we go and find the controls, do we have any chance of stopping this thing from auto-firing?” asked Murderess, “And maybe turning this damn alarm off?”

“I've played with some Prone weaponry but nothing on this scale,” said Lin, “It's worth a shot, though, I guess.”

As they moved through the winding corridors of the Xern, they met no further resistance. It was like walking through a ghost ship. Dead Prone littered the hallways, security drones lay sparking in heaps, their processing units torn out, a turret dangled from a cut cable on the ceiling. 

“Did you do all this by yourself?” Celica demanded of the cat in her arms. Mittens only blinked sleepily. As long as you didn't view her through a battle scope, she really didn't look like anything other than an amiable, dozy pet. A few doors down, they found an elevator and managed to translate enough Prone to work out which floor was the bridge. A vast room full of holo-windows that were left on in the middle of their operations, still waiting for more input, the entire place was deserted, probably evacuated in a futile attempt to save the most important officers. Mittens had already taken down the two turrets protecting the Captain's chair, so Lin sat down and mused over the controls. She pointed to the Security Officer's terminal and told Murderess how to turn off the alarm, while she tried to decipher the more complicated gunnery controls. After half an hour of trial and error, during which she managed to accidentally fire the main cannon and level a medium-sized island off the coast of Noctilum, she finally worked out how to turn all the auto-fire protocols off. She also discovered that the Xern wasn't flying on autopilot and was in fact on a collision course with the Divine Roost. On the observation window, she saw a worried-looking Telethia Endbringer, its long spiny tail coiled around a rocky spire, tilting its head to examine the titanic engine of war that was careening uncontrollably towards it. 

Lin sighed. So far she had been blessed with good luck when trying to operate the controls but she really had no idea how to fly one of these things. She felt like snapping at Celica about how slow her Skell was going but it was Lin's own fault she hadn't secretly added some way to overclock the jets.

“We may experience some slight turbulence,” she muttered to herself. 

“Something wrong there, Lin?” asked Murderess, “Look, I found food. I think. Can we eat Prone food?”

“Not hungry,” replied Lin. In fact, she was thinking of throwing up again. Despite its size, the carrier was descending quite rapidly. It was hard to tell from inside but looking at the observation window made her stomach curdle. 

Then her Skell autopilot device started beeping again. Small blips sped onto the Xern's radar, flying in a V formation straight towards them. She zoomed in on them and, to her elation, saw Celica's rather battered Skell, accompanied by a small fleet. She recognised a couple of the other designs: Doug's heavy blue Skell with the very large gun, Irina and Gwyn's fast red Skells with a large array of photon melee weaponry, Nagi's sleek black and white Skell with all the latest upgrades. They must have gone out looking for the missing girls, maybe seen Lin's Skell disappear from radar or Celica's Skell wandering around without a pilot.

She sighed again and facepalmed as one particular Skell veered off from the rest and took a pot-shot at the Telethia Endbringer. 

“Well, it looks like someone won't be around to annoy Mittens!” said Celica cheerfully. Then they all ran to the hangar, yelling greetings to their friends over the intercom that crackled into life.


	4. Chapter 4

“Someone at door!” reported Tatsu. Lin was dismayed to realise she missed that shrill, wheedling voice. During the many near-death experiences she had undergone in the short space of time, she had thought about Tatsu a lot, once she had finished mourning her Skell. The poor thing had been impossible to salvage but at least she had been able to spend the reward money from the captured Xern on a new model. Tatsu had admitted to missing Lin as well, and had made her one of his famous lunchbox meals, containing a Nopon made out of rice with a face made out of vegetables, clothes and hair made out of fish, resting on a bed of beansprouts.

“Oh, it big dumb friend!” the Nopon elaborated, doing a little dance. Celica did not look so pleased. Scooping up Mittens, she held the cat tightly and shrank back into her chair. Mittens glared at the door as it opened, fixing Doug a look of affront at his very existence. To be fair on the guy, thought Lin, that cat looks at most people that way. Doug took off his sunglasses, lifted an eyebrow and returned the look. He was dressed rather formally today, which meant he had probably been in an official meeting that he had almost certainly loathed. Lin put the kettle on to make him a strong cup of tea. It wasn't exactly a secret that he wanted to return to active service as soon as possible. His heroic distraction of the Endbringer while the others fled had caused him so many injuries, he was still limping a little after they repaired his Mimeosome. It was probably a psychological wound, the technicians had said.

“Good news for you girls,” he said. His sigh said that it wasn't necessarily good news for him, “The Beast's off the hook.”

“Really?” Celica's features brightened. She looked down at her cat and kissed Mittens on the forehead. The cat gave her a confused mewl, then reached up to lick her nose. The two had become fast friends and Celica was trying to socialise the cat to other people as well. So far, Mittens had deigned to allow Lin and Tatsu to stroke her. Gwyn she tolerated the presence of. For some bizarre reason, she also had a soft spot for Boze. Of course, the absolute most loved person in the whole of New LA was Rock, who shamelessly spoiled all small animals given to him.

“Aisha’s vote was the deciding one. She’s kind of the specialist around here, so her vote counts for a lot,” he said.

“Wait… Aisha is… Matthias’ cat? She finally chose a division?” Murderess asked, “She chose YOU guys?”

“Aww, I wanted her to join the Outfitters so I could teach her to carry a toolbox!” said Lin.

“It was us or the Curators in the end. She loves chasing shiny things, but the lure of fresh Lophid steaks outside our hangar door every morning was just too much to pass up,” Doug said, “Again, not my choice, but a lot of the guys wanted a mascot. That, and she took down that Ovis I was telling you about.”

“I’m so glad she’s finally getting on with other cats!” said Celica.

“That wasn’t the only deciding factor, you know! She’s not a particularly threatening Tyrant. She doesn’t attack if you leave her alone, she’s too small to ruin the balance of the ecosystem and she does her business in the litterbox,” he shrugged, “We're actually thinking she might be a valuable asset, to teach us how exactly Tyrantism occurs.”

“She's not a lab animal!” complained Celica.

“We won't do anything harmful to her, we’re just going to teach her to follow Aisha around so we can record the data. It's important to New LA's future,” he said, “We're now pretty sure that anything can evolve to become a Tyrant, so we need to take some precautions against it, maybe develop some gene therapy.”

“It's scary how this planet affects life,” said Lin, “How can something just evolve a trait?”

“I can't say I understand the science behind it. I'll leave that to the bigwigs,” said Doug, “But one thing's for certain: that cat has imprinted on you, Celica, so it's your responsibility to take care of it and stop it getting into trouble.”

“Big dumb friend should come round more often. Then he can make friends with kitty-cat. Tatsu show you how!” promised the Nopon. Tatsu had made a toy for the cats with an Evello feather on a string, which he presented to Doug and demonstrated how to twirl it around.

“Tatsu, I just said the Harriers already have a cat,” he sighed, “I already do this all the time to coax Aisha out from under my Skell. You know, you should have just taken me along with you on your mission in the first place!”

“I agree with Tatsu, though. I wouldn't mind you staying here, if it'd stop you going away on missions when the doctor said to rest!” Lin added.

“Uh… I'd love to, but I promised I'd help Boze travel to Noctilum. Not on a hunt! He just wanted to get out of town for a while. Spiritual retreat stuff, you know what Boze is into.”

“Uh-huh. And you won't see something big and shiny that you feel you absolutely have to shoot at right now?”

“If you're worried, why don't you load the Skell up for personal protection only? I need someone to give it a quick look over anyway.”

“Sure, I'll see what you've done to your Skell this time!” Lin yawned, stretched and walked over to the hangar.

“She forgot that toolbox over there,” said Doug, pointing to a box in the corner of the couch. Tatsu ran to pick it up, then bounced down the corridor, yelling for 'Linly'.

“That's not a toolbox, that's a hat box,” said Celica.

“I know. I needed to talk to you in private,” he sighed, “Look, you're gonna get a lot of cats showing up, now there's a Tyrant in town. The others kinda flock towards them. It's a big disruption to their pecking order.”

“Wonderful! I always did have a vision of filling New LA with cats!”

“So you did,” he tapped his fingers on the table, “So I guess your plan worked. But I'm confused. You're not the sort of person who thinks up stuff like this. Who put you up to it? Lin?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Just tell me two things: do you intend to do this again, and did you just search our database without permission or did you alter anything?”

She lowered her head in shame, “I just looked. Sorry. I only thought of it because there were two Harriers looking at the database while they were waiting for their Skells to come back from the Outfitters' hangar. They didn't log out afterwards and I had a quick peek.”

“You didn't mess with any of the information at all? Remove or… add anything?”

She shook her head, looking even more confused.

“Never mind,” he gave another long-suffering sigh and buried his hands in his head, “Just… don't do it again, okay? And keep an eye on that thing.”

  


“What are you up to? No scaring Celica!” cried Lin. Doug flinched and looked up. The Nopon bounced over to put the kettle on again.

“I thought you were fixing my Skell!”

“I finished,” she said, juggling a spanner in one hand.

* * *

That night, Doug flew his Skell up into the air, hovering high above the city streets so that even the Blade tower looked tiny. His aerial view reminded him of the bird of prey that his division was named after, especially when he zoomed in using his visor's scope. In the new City that Never Sleeps, he could see all the people milling around or scurrying from place to place, some still at work, some relaxing, a few BLADEs even preparing for a night mission. Skells still rolled down the streets, stores were open, people sat outside the cafés and drank. Mittens was awake too. Judging by how rapidly the little pest was moving, he was probably having a post-midnight crazy half-hour like any other cat. He wondered if Mittens had woken Celica up, or if the girl was awake anyway, still thinking about the last few days' events. How did anyone get to sleep in the middle of Outfitter territory anyway, where someone or other was perpetually making a loud clanging noise? 

If this was a normal day, he would be sitting just outside the Administrative District hangar in the little alcove that overlooked the city below, having a few drinks with the other Harriers. Boze, who didn't approve of alcohol, would probably be working out in the park, on the outskirts of the Residential District. He wasn't sure Lin actually slept and he didn't want to think about what Murderess did late at night. 

He wasn't in the mood for drinking. Boze would be gone by this time tomorrow. Or, as his visor flashed up a message in front of his eyes to remind him, 'Bozatrix, the Twisted Unicorn'. He grinned at the slightly tasteless attempt at humour by whoever it was who actually got to name Tyrants (Nagi, probably), a subtle dig at the Harrier division's strange choice of logo when everyone else had just gone with the first letter of their division's name, except the Pathfinders, who drew a tree for some reason.

He always knew they would eventually have to lift their simple, easy 'Kill on Sight' policy when it came to Tyrants, but he assumed the reason would be something more dumb and bureaucratic and less of a slap to the face by nature itself. Maybe it was inevitable. We're the ones who know everything about them, or at least think we do. We're the ones who get strong enough to defeat them. We're the ones who stare into their eyes and are stared back at.

He briefly wondered if it was what had happened to Lao, but then shook his head. Lao had just been a crazy bastard. Boze had been furious at first, but then accepted it with the stoicism he probably learned from one of those Zen masters he kept misquoting, telling Doug that it was okay and he would go and help out as a bodyguard for the Nopon caravans until the situation got sorted. Doug wasn't sure exactly how it was supposed to get 'sorted'. Or, for that matter, why Boze had left but the damn cat got to stay.

“I'm a dog person anyway,” he muttered to himself, before swooping down on an unsuspecting beer.


End file.
